Snø i Bergen compared to snow in England

I find reactions to snow fascinating, it's a very strange thing! For those that dont know, in England every year there is typically one day of good snow fall. It will usually happen overnight and then will  be slush shortly after lunch time. I remember once it hit hard in my home town and to say chaos in-sued would be a gross understatement. After a heavily delayed train journey I found myself stuck in the town centre with a suitcase full to bursting point and post apocalyptic scenes all around me.

Hundreds of cars were abandoned all over the town and everyone I knew was stuck in hours of traffic. In the end I spent over an hour dragging my case uphil through several inches of snow where finally I met my Dad in his car. I should point out that the train station to my house was usually a 10 minute journey. I recall this snow lasted a couple of days and my town made national news!

Now lets flip to snø i Bergen, which first appeared a couple of weeks ago. To summarize, a little more traffic (but not much) everyone still goes to work/school and  basically you just get the hell on with it. Norway is a country prepared, very prepared! Bergen does not even get that much snow relative to proper snowy places, yet ploughs are everywhere, winter tires are compulsory and everyone has appropriate wool clothing. In fact Norwegians in my experience have an obsession with wool, it's like holy water and they believe it to be the answer to everything. Wool socks, thermals, hats, mittens the works! Every time I mention any part of my body being cold a Norwegian laughs at me for not covering it with wool.

Due to the fact that Bergen is pretty much guaranteed to have a few weeks of snow a year the nostalgia for it is naturally much lower, people go literally mental in England if they see a single snow flake I swear. I would say many in Bergen enjoy it, especially at first but naturally some find it frustrating, I however though have loved nearly every minute of it. I remember several times I was working outside in my job in what I would describe as blizzards. It was cold, wet and difficult to
work but such an awesome experience, I find hard snow fall really gets the adrenaline pumping. Walking through the city drunk one night in heavy snow was also a very strange and new experience. Everything was so bright it was like day time, which was nice given how few hours of sun there is now, but that's for another post.

Sadly the snow has now disappeared just in time for Christmas and does not look to be returning again in the next few weeks. A very slight disappointment but I've enjoyed the snow so far and it was a little tedious at times so I have bid it farewell for now and hope it returns for little while again in the new year.

Veiw from a balcony on one of the first snowy days

Caught in a blizzard on a walk home from town

This was around christmas either 08 or 09 in England. My brother, a friend and I made a snow rabbit

I dont get it either but it seemed like a good idea at the time, also incase you were wondering, yes the dog did get in the way a lot as I remember

Norwegian language progress and small talk

Ok so now I have all the confused mixed emotions out of the way in the last post, lets get caught up properly shall we. (This started off as a serious update on my current ability in Norwegian and then become a drawn out collection of anecdotes, at which point I thought it was best to stop as it was getting insanely long, just a heads up)

Language: 

What a topic this is, for years when ever I have heard of people emigrating I have always heard the phrase, "6 months to a year you'll have the language no problem". This seems to be a very widely held belief based on essentially nothing as far as I can tell but one that was said to me by pretty much everyone before I emigrated. 

Well the 6 month mark is officially here and its safe to say I am not conversing happily as predicted (albeit the prediction of everyone who has never spent more than two weeks in a foreign speaking country). I will try my best to explain the level I have reached although as I stated months ago this can be very difficult. I have definitely been improving constantly, lets start with that. I learn new words regularly and have even started making my way through a learning Norwegian book. However Progress is still with out doubt much slower than I would like

The one thing that I really like is that very often now people say things to me in Norwegian and I know exactly what they are saying, I am usually just talking about fairly simple statements and questions but still this is very helpful. I follow more and more conversations and I have spent time with people where we have communicated many times without them every having to speak English. That being said I still do not understand quite a lot of the time as well and am still regularly frustrated and confused,  especially when dealing with strangers. One example was when someone came and dropped the weekly fruit basket at work yesterday, assuming I was Norwegian she tried talking to me, I got the first couple of sentences and managed some semi awkward laughs and "ja ja"'s (this is my response to 90% of statements made by strangers I encounter) but then I got completely lost and so I very awkwardly walked away still chuckling slightly and saying "ja ja". This is by no means the first time this has happened!

The problem in these situations is telling someone who is just trying to make a polite passing comment or a bit of small talk in the street or at a shop or something that you didn't understand as you are English is an embarrassing and tedious situation for everyone. The thing is I have discovered that many more people than I had initially thought do not really like talking English, they understand perfectly well but will avoid actually talking it at all costs. This I completely understand as it is the same for me in Norwegian at present. Even though I often understand it still takes too long to properly construct a decent Norwegian response and I still feel very very stupid in terms of my pronunciation so if ever Im talking to people who know me I talk in English basically all the time. 

Anyway my point is imagine this situation, someone very innocently says some comment about the weather or that the shirt Ive just bought is very popular etc. . . if i fully understand I confidently respond with appropriate laughs, yes's/no's, interested noises and sounds of agreement. However if I don't, I can either gamble on some of the above, or go sorry I didnt get that I'm English. At which point they may either laugh and simply say it again in English, OR panic, look a little worried, spend a second translating it and very uncomfortably saying it in English. At which point we both feel very stupid and lose all confidence in our bilingual abilities. In short, its just not worth it. So I gamble, 80% of the time it all comes off fine and we get on with our lives. Occasionally I look stupid and they give me a confused look but by the time its all slotted into place, we have all once again moved on with our lives. Simple!

Yes I am still alive! Overview of thoughts and feelings.

Hello world, how are you? Firstly I must apologise profusely for my lack of posting for so so long. Please forgive me and thank you to all those who have been reading and commenting while I have been off the grid, I shall not let you all down again. In this post I will briefly explain why and give a quick overview of my thoughts and feelings. Reading back through I have noticed I've used the term "I think" a lot. Its very difficult sometimes to know exactly what you are feeling/felt and why so I have largely just had to hypothesize, I hope it will all become clear. Over the next weeks I will in depth go back over interesting things from the last few months.

So where have I been I hear you cry! The answer is in short, exactly where you left me, Marianne and I are still in our temporary jobs and living with her parents. This is partly the reason for my lack of posting I think, I have been very up and down over the past few months and despite dozens of times writing posts in my head I have never actually been able to get them down. It started with my laptop breaking which was where I had notes for future posts, after I lost this knew I was having to improvise and to be completely honest, I was not at all motivated.

Its not all doom and gloom my any means, I have had some really great times over the last few months and I look forward to telling you about them! But yes things have also been hard as our temporary situation drags out for longer than planned. I feel bad as I wanted to articulate my feelings so many times as after all this was meant to in some ways an aid for others and a memory for myself. That being said though, my inability to ever actually sit down and open up is probably as good an indication as any as to how I have felt in a strange sort of way. The days, weeks and months have at many times simply flowed into one with time passing faster than I had ever imagined it could while also frustrating dragging out and making me so painfully aware that things were as I should have guessed, harder than expected.

I think I remember stating in an early post that I expected the first couple of months to be quite fun and novel, and then the months to follow to be a very hard slog. Well I have never been more right although I have discovered that being aware of a challenge and actually facing it are two very very different things. A large amount of the problem has been is I think I dont like to admit to myself, or more importantly anyone else, how hard things are at times. I like to think I am always level headed and optimistic and I find it essential that others see this in me too. The last thing I want is the loved ones around me worrying, and being the insanely caring and loving people they are it is very easy to have that happen.

The bottom line is in all honesty, I am fine, really! Its difficult to be completely certain sometimes as I spend so long telling myself and others this that I forget if I'm lying, but I'm not! Yes things are hard, harder than expected, I am frustrated with the language, living and employment situation, of course I am. But all that aside I am managing ok and I am still 100% sure this is the place for me to be and that things will work themselves out very soon.